Huang Sheng's Poetics And Its Critical Practice

Huang Sheng is a scholar who lived between the end of the Ming dynasty and the beginning of the Qing dynasty. He is success in gloss study and poem theory study. For a long period, the academic circles only focus on his gloss study, ignored his poem theory. In fact, the accurate opinions and the high level of Huang Sheng's gloss study typically reflect his poetics. Focusing on certain poems in Tang dynasty, this paper discusses Huang Sheng's poetics and literature criticism practice, and the application of his poetics in literature criticism practice is analyzed.The introduction briefly introduces the life and works of Huang Sheng. He is diligent in his whole life. He has written enormous works including Excerpts of Poems in the Tang Dynasty, Comments on Du Fu's Poems, Poems in Tang Dynasty JU, Shizhu, Review of Zaijiuyuan Notes on Poetry, Zigu, Yifu and so on. This paper focuses on Huang Sheng's poetry theory, comments on poems and collections of poems.Through analyzing and probing Shizhu, Review of Zaijiuyuan Notes on Poetry, Chapter 1 of this paper generalizes the poem theory of Huang Sheng, that is focusing on poetic quality and moral quality, advocating nature, stressing on skills, paying attention to words and expressions, appreciating people of Tang Dynasty, despising people of Song Dynasty, the relationship between learning from the ancient and unique invention, advocating "bi-xing", valuing description of scenery, emphasizing the interest and the truth.Chapter 2,Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 discuss the application of Huang Sheng's poetics in its literature criticism practice of Excerpts of Poems in the Tang Dynasty, Comments on Du Fu's Poems, Poems in Tang Dynasty JU. Huang Sheng spend more than 30 years on studing Du Fu's poems, Comments on Du Fu's Poems is the main achievement of his study. It not only shows his incisive and original understanding about Du Fu's poems but also expresses his poetics through selecting Du Fu's poems to comment. Using comparative method, Excerpt of Poems in the Tang Dynasty selects modern style poems, from early stage of the Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, to analyse and comment respectively. The poems are mainly from middle and late Tang Dynasty. Excerpt of Poems in the Tang Dynasty focus on the words and sentences to seize the enchantment of poems. Poems in Tang Dynasty JU selects poems with five characters in a line in Tang Dynasty to comment. Judging from Huang Sheng's selection and comment, we could see he values metrical verses in the heyday of Tang Dynasty. Among those poems, he considers Du Fu's metrical verses as the authentic poems. Based on Huang Sheng's poetics which concluded in chapter 1, Chapter 2 selects these three books to compare and connect his poetics with practice of selecting poems by analysing the usage of his poetics through selecting and commenting Du Fu's poems.Epilogue analyses the historical status of Huang Sheng's poetics and gives a brief introduction to Huang Sheng's poetics' history background. Besides that, chapter 3 compares Huang Sheng's poetics with the mainstream of literature in the beginning of Qing Dynasty. Influenced by the culture trends change, Huang Sheng forms his unique literary concept. His poetics not only upholds the literary nature of poetry creation but also takes poems' social utility into consideration. His distinct poetry criticism practice has great importance to the study of Chinese poetics' development, it also has a significant reference to the study of traditional Chinese culture nowadays and the summary of poetics' experience.